C. N. R. Rao

C.N.R. Rao (ಸಿ.ಎನ್.ಆರ್. ರಾವ್)
Born	(1934-06-30) 30 June 1934 Bangalore, Kingdom of Mysore, British India
Residence	India
Nationality	Indian
Fields	Chemistry
Institutions	Indian Space Research Organisation IIT Kanpur Indian Institute of Science University of Oxford University of Cambridge University of California, Santa Barbara Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research
Alma mater	Mysore University Banaras Hindu University Purdue University
Known for	Solid-state chemistry Materials science
Notable awards	Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology (1969) Hughes Medal (2000) India Science Award (2004) Abdus Salam Medal (2008) Dan David Prize (2005) Legion of Honor (2005) Royal Medal (2009) Padma Shri (1974) Padma Vibhushan (1985) Bharat Ratna (2013) Order of the Rising Sun (2015) Order of Friendship (2009) National Order of Scientific Merit (2012)
Website www.jncasr.ac.in

Chintamani Nagesa Ramachandra Rao (Kannada: ಚಿಂತಾಮಣಿ ನಾಗೇಶ್ ರಾಮಚಂದ್ರ ರಾವ್) FRS, also known as C. N. R. Rao (born 30 June 1934), is an Indian chemist who has worked mainly in solid-state and structural chemistry. He currently serves as the Head of the Scientific Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India. Rao has honorary doctorates from 60 universities from around the world. He has authored around 1,500 research papers and 45 scientific books.^[1]

On 16 November 2013, the Government of India announced his selection for Bharat Ratna, the highest civilian award in India, making him the third scientist after C.V. Raman and A. P. J. Abdul Kalam^[2] to receive the award.^[3][4][5] He was conferred the award on 4 February 2014 by President Pranab Mukherjee in a special ceremony in the Durbar Hall of the Rashtrapati Bhavan.^[6][7]

Early life and education

C.N.R. Rao was born in Bangalore to Hanumantha Nagesa Rao and Nagamma Nagesa Rao.^[8][9] He was an only child, and his learned parents made an academic environment. He was well versed in Hindu literature from his mother and in English from his father at an early age. He did not attend elementary school but was home-tutored by his mother, who was particularly skilled in arithmetic and Hindu literature. He entered middle school in 1940, at age six. Although he was the youngest in his class, he used to tutor his classmates in mathematics and English. He passed lower secondary examination (class VII) in first class in 1944. He was ten years old, and his father rewarded him with four annas (twenty-five paisa). He attended Acharya Patashala high school in Basavanagudi, which made a lasting influence on his interest in chemistry. His father enrolled him to a Kannada-medium course to encourage his mother tongue, but at home used English for all conversation. He completed secondary school leaving certificate in first class in 1947. He studied BSc at Central College, Bangalore. Here he developed his communication skills in English and also learnt Sanskrit.^[10] He obtained his bachelor's degree from Mysore University in 1951, in first class, and only at the age of seventeen. He initially thought of joining Indian Institute of Science (IISc) for a diploma or a postgraduate degree in chemical engineering, but a teacher persuaded him to attend Banaras Hindu University. He obtained a master's in chemistry from BHU two years later. In 1953 he was granted a scholarship for PhD in IIT Kharagpur. But four foreign universities, MIT, Penn State, Columbia and Purdue also offered him financial support. He chose Purdue. His first research paper was published in the Agra University Journal of Research in 1954. He completed PhD in 1958, only after two years and nine months, at age twenty-four.^[10]

Profession

Rao is one of the world's foremost solid state and materials chemists. He has contributed to the development of the field over five decades.^[11] His work on transition metal oxides has led to basic understanding of novel phenomena and the relationship between materials properties and the structural chemistry of these materials.

Rao was one of the earliest to synthesise two-dimensional oxide materials such as La₂CuO₄. His work has led to a systematic study of compositionally controlled metal-insulator transitions. Such studies have had a profound impact in application fields such as colossal magneto resistance and high temperature superconductivity. Oxide semiconductors have unusual promise. He has made immense contributions to nanomaterials over the last two decades, besides his work on hybrid materials.

After completion of his graduate studies Rao returned to Bangalore in 1959 to take up a lecturing position, joining IISC and embarking on an independent research program. From 1963 to 1976 Rao accepted a permanent position in the Department of Chemistry at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, during which time he was elected as a fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences in 1964. He returned to IISc in 1976 to establish a solid state and structural chemistry unit.^[10] and became director of the IISc from 1984 to 1994. At various points in his career Rao has taken appointments as a visiting professor at Purdue University, the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge and University of California, Santa Barbara. He was the Jawaharlal Nehru Professor at the University of Cambridge and Professorial Fellow at the King's College, Cambridge during 1983–1984.^[12]

Rao is currently the National Research Professor, Linus Pauling Research Professor and Honorary President of Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bangalore which he founded in 1989.^[13] He was appointed Chair of the Scientific Advisory Council to the Indian Prime Minister in January 2005, a position which he had occupied earlier during 1985–89. He is also the director of the International Centre for Materials Science (ICMS) and serves on the board of the Science Initiative Group.^[14]

He shares co-authorship of around 1500 research papers and has co-authored and edited 45 books.^[11][15]

Awards and recognition

Scientific awards

• DSc from Mysore University in 1961
• Marlow Medal by the Faraday Society of England in 1967
• Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology in Chemical Science in 1968
• Yedanapalli Medal and Prize in 1973^[16]
• C. V. Raman Award in Physical Science by the University Grants Commission of India in 1975^[16]
• S. N. Bose Medal by the Indian National Science Academy in 1980^[17]
• Royal Society of Chemistry (London) Medal in 1981^[18]
• Member of many of the world's scientific associations, including the National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Society (London, 1982), Royal Society of Canada, French Academy, Japanese Academy, Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts and Polish Academy of Sciences, Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, Serbian Academy of Sciences, Slovenian Academy of Sciences, Brazilian Academy of Sciences, Spanish Royal Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Sciences of Korea, African Academy of Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. He is also member of the Pontifical Academy and Foreign Member of Academia Europaea.
• Founding member of the World Cultural Council in 1981.^[19]
• Honorary doctorates from several universities including Bordeaux, Caen, Colorado, Khartoum, Liverpool, Northwestern, Novosibirsk, Oxford, Purdue, Stellenbosch, Universite Joseph Fourier, Wales, Wroclaw, Notre Dame, Uppsala, Aligarh Muslim University, Anna, AP, Banaras, Bengal Engineering, Bangalore, Burdwan, Bundelkhand, Delhi, Hyderabad, IGNOU, IIT Bombay, Kharagpur, Delhi, Patna, JNTU, Kalyani, Karnataka, Kolkata, Kuvempu, Lucknow, Mangalore, Manipur, Mysore, Osmania, Punjab, Roorkee, Sikkim Manipal, SRM, Tumkur, Sri Venkateswara, Vidyasagar, Amity University, Gurgaon^[20] and Visveswaraya Technological University.^[11][12]
• Hevrovsky Gold Medal of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in 1989^[17]
• Meghnath Saha Medal of the Indian National Science Academy in 1990
• Einstein Gold Medal of UNESCO in 1996
• Centenary Medal of the Royal Society of Chemistry, London in 2000
• Hughes Medal by the Royal Society in 2000
• Doctor of Science from University of Calcutta in 2004^[21]
• Somiya Award of the International Union of Materials Research in 2004
• India Science Award in 2004^[22]
• Dan David Prize from Tel Aviv University in 2005^[23] shared with George Whitesides and Robert Langer.^[24]
• Foreign fellow of Bangladesh Academy of Sciences^[17]
• Abdus Salam Medal by The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) in 2008^[25]
• Nikkei Asia Prize for Science, Technology and Innovation, by Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Inc., Japan in 2008^[26]
• Khwarizmi International Award 2008 for Innovation ^[27]
• Royal Medal by the Royal Society in 2009
• August-Wilhelm-von-Hofmann Medal by the German Chemical Society in 2010.^[28]
• Ernesto Illy Trieste Science Prize for materials research in 2011
• 2012 Award for International Scientific Cooperation from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2013^[29]
• Elected honorary foreign member of Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2013^[30]
• Distinguished Academician Award from IIT Patna in 2013^[31]

Indian governmental honours

• Padma Shri in 1974
• Padma Vibhushan in 1985
• Karnataka Ratna by the Karnataka State Government in 2001^[32]
• Bharat Ratna in 2014^[6][7]

Foreign honours

• Great Cross of the National Order of Scientific Merit from the President of Brazil in 2002^[18]
• Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur (Knight of the Legion of Honour, France) in 2005^[18]
• Order of Friendship by the President of Russia in 2009^[33]
• Order of the Rising Sun (Gold and Silver Star) of Japan in 2015

Personal life

Rao is married to Indumati Rao in 1960. They have two children, Sanjay and Suchitra. His son Sanjay Rao is engaged in popularising science in Bangalore's schools. His daughter Suchitra is married to K.M. Ganesh, the director of the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) at Pune, Maharashtra.^[34] Rao is quite technophobic. He removed computers from his tables and never checks his email by himself. He also said that he uses the mobile phone only to talk to his wife.^[35]

Controversies

Rao has been subject of a number of plagiarism scandals, allegations he refutes. In December 2011, an apology was issued to the journal Advanced Materials^[36][37] – a peer-reviewed publication - , for a paper he co-authored with a junior research associate that contained text reproduced without attribution of other scientist's work.^[38] The PhD student assumed the responsibility for the incident and issued a formal apology.^[39] Later Rao offered a full withdrawal the article from the journal, however the editor let the publication stay. Rao claimed to not be complicit in the incident plagiarism.^[40]

Further controversy ensued when Rao and the other senior author of the paper, S. B. Krupanidhi, attributed blame to the principal co-author (a PhD student at IISc) for the error, "These sentences were part of the introduction of the paper, which was written by our student, that neither of us (namely, the senior authors, Rao and Krupanidhi) paid attention to". Particular public criticism was directed at Rao with relation his handling of the allegations, claiming senior co-authorship of a published work only to distance himself when problems arose. Rao was criticised by an Indian scientist for these incidents and passing the responsibility to the junior scientists, raising questions of his understanding and practice of modern research ethics.^[41]

More allegations of instances of plagiarism in papers co-authored Rao have been reported.^[42]

On 17 November 2013, at a press conference following the announcement of his Bharat Ratna, he called the Indian politicians "idiots" that caused a national outrage. He said, "Why the hell have these idiots [politicians] given so little to us despite what we have done. For the money that the government has given us we [scientists] have done much more."^[43] In his defence Rao insisted that he merely talked about the "idiotic" way the politicians ignore investments for research funding in science.^[44]

References

Further reading

• C.N.R. Rao (2010). Climbing the Limitless Ladder: A Life in Chemistry. World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., Singapore. ISBN 9814307866

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to C. N. R. Rao.

• Academic profile at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences
• Dan David Prize laureate 2005
• Prof. CNR Rao @ JNCASR
• Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research
• C.N.R. Rao Hall of Science
• Solid State and Structural Chemistry Unit

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Bharat Ratna laureates
1954–1960	C. Rajagopalachari, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, and C. V. Raman (1954) Bhagwan Das, Mokshagundam Visvesvarayya, and Jawaharlal Nehru (1955) Govind Ballabh Pant (1957) Dhondo Keshav Karve (1958)
1961–1980	Bidhan Chandra Roy and Purushottam Das Tandon (1961) Rajendra Prasad (1962) Zakir Husain and Pandurang Vaman Kane (1963) Lal Bahadur Shastri (1966) Indira Gandhi (1971) V. V. Giri (1975) K. Kamaraj (1976) Mother Teresa (1980)
1981–2000	Vinoba Bhave (1983) Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1987) M. G. Ramachandran (1988) B. R. Ambedkar and Nelson Mandela (1990) Rajiv Gandhi, Vallabhbhai Patel, and Morarji Desai (1991) Abul Kalam Azad, J. R. D. Tata, and Satyajit Ray (1992) Gulzarilal Nanda, Aruna Asaf Ali, and A. P. J. Abdul Kalam (1997) M. S. Subbulakshmi and Chidambaram Subramaniam (1998) Jayaprakash Narayan, Amartya Sen, Gopinath Bordoloi, and Ravi Shankar (1999)
2001–present	Lata Mangeshkar and Bismillah Khan (2001) Bhimsen Joshi (2008) C. N. R. Rao and Sachin Tendulkar (2014) Madan Mohan Malaviya and Atal Bihari Vajpayee (2015)